I'd rather be having a quiet drink... and can be followed on Twitter @alcothusiast; and friended on Untappd (handle: "neilcake" - all welcome).

Thursday, 8 May 2014

Ardbeg 10: it's a salty sex party in your mouth.

Purchasing whisky
has become increasingly difficult over the last year or so, as I widen my
tastes and extend my budget. For my most recent single malt acquisition, I
decided to restrict myself to around £40. I had just gotten back from holiday
after all, so some of that still needed paying for…

Oddly though, when I
put out a call for recommendations on Twitter, I got nothing - and with all the whisky people who follow
me… very strange. Well I wasn’t waiting forever, and despite the fact that I
didn’t want to get an Islay malt, I couldn’t
really decide what else to get. I
decided then that it was time to right a wrong and make a dream come true. I
had wanted to buy a bottle of Ardbeg when I visited Islay last February,
but had been unable to do so because the distillery was closed on the Saturday,
when I had planned to make my purchases.

I won’t be making
these kinds of mistakes again, I assure you. Next time I visit any
distilleries, I’ll check when they’re open. And for next time I need to decide
what to buy, I’ve actually come up with a very geeky system that alternates
between all the various styles, regions and ages… I’ll be telling you about
that another time.

In the meantime, I
hope you enjoy this short post that is all about the Ardbeg 10. Apologies in
advance that there are no photos in this one. Somehow I forgot to photograph it
during its short lifespan, no doubt believing I had already done so. Ah well.

Ardbeg 10 is bottled
at 46%, as it should be (at the very least) and is non-chill filtered. You can
pick it up for between £35 (if you’re verylucky) and £45 (if less so).

I had to have mine
delivered to work, which I’ll never do again since they had it in the post room
three days before finally bringing it to my office. I’d started to get paranoid
because the courier had confirmed they’d delivered it – what if someone liberated
it? What if they stored it inappropriately? Hurry
up and bring iiiiiit…

I delayed fulfilment (the moment of opening) just
a couple of weeks, until a Friday night when all I had to look forward to was a
weekend of DIY. If I wasn’t going to get to relax this weekend, I was going to
start it off right.

What you’re talking
about when you get the Ardbeg 10 is absolute value for money. It is already renowned as one of the finest
whiskies in the world, and it is certainly one of the best I’ve experienced. It
pushes towards those heights of surely being about as enjoyable as it is possible
for a whisky to be, and whenever I try a new spirit, that is what I’m looking for. You open the bottle, and it jumps out at you
(like releasing a genie from a bottle as one particularly good review on Master
of Malt puts it), even instantly transports you somewhere else – in this case
Islay, of course. If you’ve never been, this
is the smell of Islay; thick, sweet peat – if you visit the various
distilleries at least. Pour it and you can sit for ten minutes just inhaling
those fumes from the top of your glencairn glass, no rush, no need to actually
taste it yet. I took one sniff, and just passed it straight to Mrs Cake, check this out. Amazing. Nosing this
whisky alone is as enjoyable as drinking so many other whiskies.

The colour is very
pale, putting many cheaper, artificially coloured whiskies to shame with its
bare-faced cheek. I ams what I ams,
it says, and what I ams, it goes on, is very lightly coloured and even a bit
cloudy – that’ll be the lack of chill filtering, don’tchaknow. Yes, deeply
coloured whiskies look nice, but I’m not buying them for their colour. Having
said that, I do tend to be put off at the point of purchase by pale, urine-hued
whiskies, but Ardbeg doesn’t need you to entertain such concerns because it
comes in a dark green bottle, that it might give you a surprise:

Aw, it’s yellow!

Worry ye not.

When you do get to
the tasting, it is everything a whisky should be; sweet and warming. The
flavour doesn’t dissipate, it envelops the tongue and embraces it like it’s a salty
sex party in your mouth and everyone’s on ecstacy (except they do get to
achieve completion. All of them. Repeatedly).
Every drop radiates and demands you prise everything you can from each
molecule. Forget about all your vanillas
and your chocolates and your green apples and whatever else you look
for to convince yourself whatever you’re drinking has quality and complexity,
just savour the intense richness, the rich intenseness and the tense rich
in-ness.

So, what about the
finish? Well, the Ardbeg 10 has an afterglow that lingers like a night of
strenuous love that slowly dissolves into the dawn. You open your eyes and peer
at the morning, creeping through the blinds and think, what a night; let’s stay in and do it again.

If you were to wait
for it to fade completely between each sip a double measure could last you
hours. Even better - and what I consider to be the mark of a truly great
finish; there will be occasions the following evening (even the day after that)
when you can taste it almost as clearly as the night before. As one reviewer on
Proof66 notes, “You know when you spend the night next to a camp fire and your
clothes smells like smoke the next day? That's what Ardbeg does to my mouth. “
And that, of course is a good thing. My analogy would be… dirtier, but I’m
going to resist the temptation.

If you want to pass
an entertaining ten minutes, you might like to have a look at the reviews of
Ardbeg 10 on Master of Malt. Opinion is divided between the extremes with (at
the time of writing) 25 five star reviews, 14 four and a half star reviews and
6 four star reviews on the one hand alongside 6 reviews where only half a star is awarded and a smattering
of other low scores on the other. Sure, the weight is clearly in favour of this
being a quality dram, but it is fascinating how much it offends some people.
One of them says, “I’ll be giving this away” – how I wish I could be the lucky
recipient – while another poured it down the sink, and more than a few were
overpowered by iodine. Pussies.

Of particular note
is one reviewer who ‘always takes his dram with Irn Bru’ - because it adds more flavour to whisky – though with
Ardbeg the combination is ‘awful’ – well,
I know Irn Bru’s all right, so it must be the Ardbeg that is the problem...

I suppose that’s
like a restaurant critic who professes to eat everything with ketchup and then
complains that it doesn’t work with the duck – as if it’s the duck that ruined
the ketchup. I don’t think you’d give their reviews much credence. Sorry for ruining your Irn Bru with my fine
single malt… you fucking idiot.

Another reviewer
attempts to qualify his half star review by stating “I am very open minded”,
which you could compare to starting a sentence with “I’m not a racist but…” or
“I’m hot homophobic but…” or “I’ve never hit a woman but…”

Seriously; thanks
for coming out.

Just because some of
the negative reviews are ludicrous, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t heed what
they say. The fact remains that some people don’t like Ardbeg. You might be
among them, so be warned. Either way, I’m firmly among Ardbeg’s admirers, and I
don’t care if you don’t like it.

Definitions

What happens when you zone out after having had a cheeky lunchtime pint.

Alcothusiast:

Not an alcoholic, someone who appreciates booze.

Anxiety, The:

The uneasy feeling that accompanies any noteworthy hangover.

Booze Buffet Mentality:

The propensity people have to go nuts whenever there's a free bar.

Booze Porn:Photos of alcohol.

Bread Chest:Not booze related, but this term describes the indigestion you get from eating too many bread products too quickly. Just putting it out there...

Crawler's Block:The inability to decide where to go next during a pub crawl - often resulting in crawl stagnation and someone saying, "shall we just have another one here?"

Crawl Stagnation:The result of failing to plan a pub crawl sufficiently - lack of a route, theme or over-familiarity with nearby pubs can all be contributing factors.

Excess Induced Alcohol Aversion:An intolerance for a drink caused (usually) by one occasion of overindulgence.

The Family:My whisky collection.

MOMA:

Moment of Maximum Appreciation. Every bottle has one. It's the time you drink it where you enjoy it most.

Old Man Pub:Traditional British pub, renowned for being quiet, cosy and frequented by old men. Much favoured by people who like a nice chat while they drink.Psychological Drinks Cabinet:Collective term relating to the kinds of alcoholic drinks a person has need for.Road Beers:

Cans of beer that you take with you when you go out, to consume on the way.

The 3 Types of Rum:White, gold and dark. Together they form the base of many a great cocktail.

About Me

Neil Cake is interested in all types of booze, but is by no means an authority or expert. Most of the time he's just trying to be funny, but he is learning, and enjoys sharing his adventures and what he learns on the Drink it How You Like it blog.
Thengyuverrymuuuuuch.